steinway > pianos > square grands
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Steinway Square Grands
In general these pianos are to be avoided unless for decorative purposes (I quote fancy using one as my office work desk actually). Here are some randomly select opinions of square pianos that I found on the internet.
1. Steinway built a LOT of square pianos in the 19th century and
to my knowledge none of them were anything special
2. The problem that square pianos present is that most of them need mammoth amounts of work and they won't be able to perform to modern standards when done.
3.[taken from "The Piano Book" by Larry Fine]
A person shopping for a used piano stops into an antique store where a
square piano is on display, and, charmed by the ornate legs and unusually
shaped case--highly polished for the occasion--the shopper plunks down her
money and drags the beast home. How lovely it will go with the pseudo-Victorian
furniture! Then begin the phone calls to the piano technicians to get the
charming antique "tuned up.
Well, the first 5 technicians called politely decline the work. They don't know anything about square piano, they say, or they find them too much trouble to work on. The 6th technician needs the work badly, and so agrees to do the best he can to patch up the musical innards using a hodge-podge assortment of antique and modern parts he manages to scrounge up. After several months of futile tinkering, the piano still does not work right, and phone calls to the technician are no longer returned, so a 7th technician is called. This one, a wise and compassionate soul, assesses the damage and calmly tell the owner the sad truth. This piano, he says, like most other squares, has little or no historical, artistic, or financial value, would cost thousands of dollars to repair correctly, and even then would be unsuitable to practice on, even for a beginner. Indeed, especially for a beginner--unless that beginner is to lose all interest in music!
4. The keys and their fulcrums are on a sloping ratio, there is no way to get them to play evenly. The soundboard area is about equal to a spinet, yet they take up as much room as anything in a home. The string tension causes the case to go into warp, making a hash of damper regulation. They have four legs, so any movement is likely to cause a wholesale change in tuning.
5. They sure can hold a coaster and a drink like nobody's business. :-)
6. Tone was relatively weak, even when new. My observations lead me to believe the makers hadn't yet figured out that crowning the soundboard makes it sound better. I could be wrong, but it's been true on every one I've personally measured. Other design features made for an inferior tone, compared to what we have now. Also, you can't get parts for them.
They were simply an interim design in the evolution of the piano- as things were changing over from substantially handmade, delicate, low volume, and short-lived to the robust dynamic product of the industrial revolution the piano later became. It's an evolutionary link, like steam-powered vehicles. Interesting, but inferior.
That was a genuinly random selection of comments. I didn't purposefully chose
only negative opinions. So tread carefully when looking into purchasing a
Steinway Square Grand Piano - they aren't as good as they look!!